PREFACE. 



A DESIRE to advance the science of Botany by any 

 additional remarks and facts which might be in my pos- 

 session, connected with an endeavour to instruct the 

 ignorant, in this engaging science, are the motives 

 which have induced the author to the prosecution of a 

 laborious but gratifying task. 



How much he has drawn from every popular source 

 of information and thus advanced the merit of this little 

 publication by the labours of others almost every page 

 can testify. 



The tacit evidence of Botanists to the accuracy of 

 the prevailing definitions of genera and species, affordj 

 as it were, an almost inviolable sanction to the la- 

 bours of their authors, and appear to stamp with te- 

 merity every attempt at subversion. The limits of ge- 

 nera, however, since the times of Linnaeus, reverting in 

 a measure to their former simplicity, have now been 

 greatly reduced, and more particularly so, since Botany, 

 assuming a philosophical character, lays chaim to a 

 classification by natural affinities. In this interesting 

 and now prevailing view of the subject, a reduction of 

 heterogenous materials to their natural types, has led 

 the way to the construction of genera better according 

 with the plan of nature. 



One of the strongest, and perhaps most important ob- 

 jections urged against these improvements is the confu- 

 sion v;hich they are innocently the means of introducing 



